Free The End of the Dream by Ann Rule Page A

He would crawl through the ceiling and along the rafters, taking apart heating ducts if he had to, and dropping down into nearby labs to take what he needed.
    Nobody ever suspected him, nobody even missed what he took. It was ironic. Scott Scurlock was a student who had the intelligence and, perhaps more importantly, the intellectual curiosity and innovative ability to work on mankind’s problems this was a man who read scientific journals avidly. But he chose to make drugs instead of helping humanity.   Even though he often talked about the need to find cures for AIDS and cancer, Scott was too busy filling the orders of drug dealers he had contacted in and around Olympia to do more than talk. Kevin inadvertently came close to blowing Scott’s cover. He forgot his paint kit one day and went to Scott’s lab. The door was locked and he asked one of the janitors to let him in so he could retrieve it. The janitor didn’t notice anything unusual either. “Boy, was Scott mad at me when I told him I’d had the janitor let me in. And I still didn’t know why.” Scott was making money simply from selling a vital component of crystal meth, and that, he told friends he trusted, was the most important thing to him. That was where he got the drive to study as hard as he did. “These are the keys that are going to make me money, “ he bragged.   “All these students are here, trying to get some stupid degree. Who wants a degree? What are you going to do with it? Go get a job for $45,000 or $50,000 a year with a chemical company, and you’ll be sitting there putting test tubes in line and growing things in petri dishes.   Bullshit. That’s boring.” Even more than his revulsion at the thought of being strapped for money, was Scotty Scurlock’s horror at being bored.   He had rarely been bored in his life. Everything had come easy for him good looks, health, excitement, pleasure, beautiful women, and sex.   Scott never did get his college degree although he went to classes regularly or sporadically at Evergreen for six years. Steve Meyers left Italy for what he believed would be the last time in 1984. His travels took him to Paris, and there he found Diana Gerhart. He had not forgotten her.
    This time there was no question about their feelings for one another.
    Steve took Diana back to Italy in 1985, and they began to live together.   They loved the warm lazy days, the evenings where they sat in a street cafe, sipping red wine and eating pasta while they talked as earnestly as if they had just met each other. Steve was in love again, but it only made his already complicated life more complicated.
    He wanted to be in America so that he could spend as much time as he could with Cara, who was five years old now. But Diana was a Brazilian citizen and needed the proper papers to emigrate to America. She couldn’t even visit until Steve arranged for that, so reluctantly, he left Diana behind in Europe and came home to obtain the paperwork that would let her travel to the United States with him. In the autumn of 1985, Diana Gerhart joined Steve in Virginia. They had some hard times ahead of them, although Steve was making some progress in selling his work. That year, he had a one-man exhibit of his sculpture and furniture at Unica Design in Bethesda, Maryland, and he showed his work at the Studio Garden Show in Great Falls.
    Steve returned to antique-furniture restoration, but always with the hope that one day he would be doing his own sculpture and building his uniquely designed furniture exclusively. He had to go where the work was and so he traveled frequently. But Steve always kept in touch with Cara.   He wanted her to know she had a devoted father. This caused tension with both Maureen and Diana, his exlover and his fiancee pulled at him, making it difficult for him to arrange visits with Cara. Steve had an exhibition in May 1986, in the posh Georgetown section of Washington, DC. It was titled “Into the Twilight, “